The number of Israelis willing to confront the Nakba is growing steadily. In percentiles, Israelis are probably second only to the Palestinians in commemorating the Nakba. But we need national, institutional recognition.

Last week, Bassam and I talked about how Palestinians (at least those in Palestine) know more about the Holocaust and respect the sentiments it provokes, yet most Israelis are still afraid of the word Nakba.

Palestinians learn about the Holocaust because they understand that is has direct implications on their every day life. In that sense, it is part of their history. Israelis know that the Nakba is part of their history, but they are afraid of the implications admitting it – even to themselves – will have on their lives. For a Palestinian, the image of an old woman holding a rusty key is a symbol for the pain, the humiliation, the yearning. For most Israelis, it is a direct threat.

Acknowledging the Palestinian narrative does not imply accepting their most naive and uncompromising dreams. We need to learn to face each others pains, dreams and desires, while at the same time maintaining the principle that the living have precedence over the dead. Respect the past but commit to the future.

One gloomy day in January 1997, an experienced negotiator from the State Department, Aaron David Miller, found himself crawling around with a tape measure on a street in Hebron, figuring how to create a boundary between Palestinians and Israeli settlers in the seething West Bank city. Only Americans could implement this aspect of the Oslo accords, apparently; neither side trusted the other to measure the width of a road.

The incident became a famous metaphor at the time, illustrating the desperate suspicions that had frustrated American “peace processors” for decades, and Miller now tells the story as a bit of self-deprecating comedy. “I felt small and ridiculous,” he writes, “certainly as a representative of the world’s only superpower.”

The verdict on American contribution?

Sometimes, when the United States gets intensely involved, the parties negotiate more with the Americans than with each other, setting up an unhealthy dynamic. And major progress has been made behind Washington’s back: the first Egyptian-Israeli breakthrough in secret talks between Moshe Dayan and Hassan Tuhaimi; the Oslo accords of 1993, hammered out by Israeli and P.L.O. officials meeting without Americans; and the 1994 Israeli-Jordanian peace treaty, worked out clandestinely by the two countries on their own.

But as always, Bush tops them all:

In 2004, the President arrived for a photo with nearly 200 Israelis and Arab teenagers who had spent three weeks at a camp in Maine run by Seeds of Peace, which Miller led after leaving government. Having reached across the chasm of distrust, the youngsters represented hopeful elements of the next generation, and when Miller asked Bush if he’d “offer a word or two of encouragement to these remarkable young leaders,” Bush replied, “Gotta go, gotta go,” strode away, then stopped and called back over his shoulder before disappearing, “Gotta implement that road map, gotta do it.”

According to Miller, for the last couple of decades America has been treating Israel as that cute spoiled nefew:

He blames himself as much as anyone else. Under Clinton, he admits, the Office of the Special Middle East Coordinator, headed by Dennis Ross with Miller as deputy, was insular, improperly supervised, and imbued with such a “pro-Israel orientation” that “not a single senior-level official involved with the negotiations was willing or able to present, let alone fight for, the Arab or Palestinian perspective.” As the number of Israeli settlers in the West Bank and Gaza grew by 46 percent during the Rabin years, “None of us ever gave much thought to challenging the prime minister,” he observes. “I don’t recall a single tough, honest conversation in which we said to the Israelis, Look, settlements may not violate the letter of Oslo, but they’re wreaking havoc with its spirit and compromising the logic of a gradual process of building trust and confidence.”

but that doesn’t mean they were any better with Arafat –

Paradoxically, the Clinton administration didn’t lean hard enough on the Palestinians, either. “We failed to press [Yassir] Arafat sufficiently” on the corruption, cronyism, incitement, and terrorism over which he presided as the Palestinian Authority, created by the Oslo accords, took over parts of the West Bank and Gaza, Miller says.

As a rule, I bluntly turn down sponsorship requests. If you can show me the logical link between you bungee jumping of Victoria falls and the welfare of blind cats, I’ll pay you a tenner. Otherwise, I’m happy to pay for you not to go. If you really want to help those cats, get a job, make some money, and do what you please with it.

But rules are made to be broken:

My dear friends,

As most of you know, Barnet Refugee Service is “my” organization. I was involved with it since its conception, was pregnant with it (as a team member and as an acting-coordinator of one of its parents organizations, which I had joined first as a volunteer in January 1999), and has been active in it in different capacities from the day it was born.

In the last 2 years I have been one of the trustees of this wonderful organization, and saw it going from strength to strength, recruiting more staff for more projects, assisting more and more clients, who – due to tightening of immigration legislation and withdrawing of support from asylum seekers – are becoming more and more destitute and desperate.

One of the things we offer our clients is legal advice – an invaluable stuff in times when most of the good immigration solicitors had withdrew their services, yet again because of bad government policy. A newish piece of legislation limits Legal Aid funding to such a few hours per asylum case, that the good law firms declared that under these conditions they cannot possibly prepare a strong asylum claim or represent clients in Home Office interviews and further legal proceedings. The disastrous result of this is that many asylum seekers are being refused asylum and returned to their countries to face persecution and possible death.

Another frustrating fact which we need to address now is huge funding cuts that we recently suffered, and that is despite our commended services and successful outcomes year by year. We are not the only charity who suffered these cuts of public funding from the Lottery Fund and I guess we can thank the Olympic games for that…

SO, we need your help. I won´t go on about our great aims and ethos and won´t go into further details of the services we offer – you can read all that on our website at http://www.barnetrefugeeservice.org.uk/.

I would just ask you to sponsor me (and/or Rony…) in a 10 km walk we will join ON 19th May as detailed below,TO RAISE MONEY FOR BARNET REFUGEE SERVICE LEGAL ADVICE SERVICES.
PLEASE SPONSOR ME GENEROUSLY.

Yours,
tirza

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The 4th London Legal Support Trust sponsored walk is a 10 km circle round London’s legal landmarks which starts at the Royal Courts of Justice at 5.30 and ends at the Law Society.
Last year 1,800 walkers raised over £200,000.
Your donation will go directly to BRS and will help us to provide advice and support to asylum seekers who have fled persecution.

If you prefer to send a cheque, please make it payable to “Barnet Refugee Service” and send it with a completed GiftAid form (attached) to:
BRS, c/o Peter Salomon, 30 Gurney Drive, London, N2 0DG

To join the walk and find your own sponsors please contact Peter Salomon at p@kandps.co.uk.

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PS. as it happens, we are also looking for new trustees to join us in our AGM in July. If I got you interested in BRS – why not volunteer a few hours per month and offer your skills and experience to better the lives of those fleeing persecution?